Strong attendance gains at U.S. theme parks, after two years of declines, helped drive worldwide attendance up 2.2 percent, to 252.4 million visitors in 2004, according to an annual estimate by Amusment Business magazine.

U.S. theme park attendance grew by 4 percent over 2003, to 169.1 million visitors, the magazine reported. A weak dollar has helped keep U.S. tourists at home, and made the U.S. a more afforable destination for many Europeans.

Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom continued to lead the world's theme parks in attendance, attracting 8 percent more visitors this year, for a total of 15.1 million ticks of the turnstyles. Anaheim, California's Disneyland jumped its Tokyo sister for the number two slot, with a 5 percent increase in attendance bring the flagship Disney park to 13.4 million visitors for the year.

Both the Tokyo Disney parks were flat in 2004, with Tokyo Disneyland bringing in 13.2 million visitors and Tokyo DisneySea attracting 12.2 million.

Disneyland Paris help on to the number five slot worldwide, with 10.2 million visitors -- flat from last year.

The Disney World theme parks continued to rule the Orlando market, with Epcot, Disney-MGM and Disney's Animal Kingdom taking the number three throgh five slots for top U.S. theme park attendance.

None of the positions among the U.S. top ten changed, with Universal Studios Florida capturing the sixth slot, followed by its sister Islands of Adventure. Disney's California Adventure, SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood again rounded out the top ten in the U.S.

Here are the year-end attendance estimates for U.S. theme parks, from Amusement Business magazine:

Theme Park

2004 Attendance

Increase from 2003

Magic Kingdom

15.1 million

8%

Disneyland

13.4 million

5%

Epcot

9.4 million

9%

Disney-MGM Studios

8.2 million

7%

Animal Kingdom

7.8 million

7%

Universal Studios Florida

6.7 million

14%

Islands of Adventure

6.3 million

13%

California Adventure

5.6 million

6%

SeaWorld Orlando

5.6 million

4%

Universal Studios Hollywood

5 million

8%

Comments in chronological order. Most recent at the bottom. Scroll down to respond.

Here's another tidbit from an article on the subject. 12 of the 13 Six Flags parks in the worldwide top 50 either saw no increase or a decline by as much as 13 percent in 2004. Overall attendance at Six Flags parks dropped 4.5 percent in the first nine months. Also, the only major Florida park that didn't see an increase was Busch Gardens Tampa...they will certainly see one next year though with the new B&M coaster. If you want to see what a B&M coaster can do for you, just take a look at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark... who had a 30 percent increase in attendance with the introduction of Demon.

As for my home parks, Paramount's Kings Island saw a 7 percent increase and 3.5 million visitors this past year. It was the highest ranked regional park. Cedar Point saw a 4 percent decrease this past year with 3.1 million visitors. Also worth noting is Paramount's Canada's Wonderland, which saw a 30 percent attendance increase to actually finish ahead of Cedar Point this year with 3.4 million. Paramount seems to have their stuff together, and with the Italian Job coaster going into both PKI and Canada's Wonderland, they will be sitting pretty next year as well.

According to the recent AB article on 2004's attendance figures, they mention a "re-working" of the originally released 2003 numbers due to changes in the research methods causing certain estimates to be lowered from their original estimates released late last year. Specifically, they pointed out the Universal parks as being among the most affected (in terms of lowering original estimates).

I wouldn't use the "percent" changes much at all this year in trying to compare parks or their respective growths. They are kind of useless in my opinion, especially with the artifical and questionable growth shown for Universal Orlando. In order to post 14% and 13% increases at USF and IOA in 2004, respectively, the parks would have only drawn around 5.9 million for USF and 5.5 million for IOA in 2003. That would be considerable all-time lows for UO, which I just don't believe happened in 2003.

The huge jump up for IOA makes me wonder if the revised 2003 numbers AB used were too low. I could see a jump at USF due to Mummy, but I'd be surprised if it was as large as AB is claiming.

Looking down the list, Paramount showed well, as did Disney and Universal. Busch was flat, and the only bright spot for Cedar Fair was Knott's, due to massive discounting on kids' tickets. Indeed, Kings Island now beat Cedar Point. And with new themed attractions at PKI next year, compared with flat rides at CP, expect PKI'd lead over CP to extend in 2005.

(I'd also look for Busch to rebound next year, with what looks to be strong attractions in Tampa and Williamsburg in 2005. The SeaWorld parks need some help, though. Stripped-down thrill rides -- a la San Diego's Journey to Atlantis -- won't get it done.)

Six Flags, however, is the financial disaster here, as the halt in capital expansion we forecast here on TPI more than two years ago finally creamed the company in its attendance numbers.

^^Maybe it was all the APers taking repeat trips into the park to take a look at the painting projects, lol. Honestly, I don't know how DL saw such an increase either. Maybe TOT did actually help bring people to DCA and thus to DLR as a whole? Who knows.

As for Robert's comment about the Disneyhland Resort Attendance... "Also, how in the heck did Disneyland go *up* this year, with fewer discounts and most of its E-tickets closed for the bulk of the year? Not to mention much of the park being behind tarps."

Well, I also find it interestesting, especially after Disney's CFO Tom Staggs went on the record in the Disney's 4th Quarter and Year End Conference call on November 18th....

>>Disneyland Resort had high single digit declines in attendance during the 4th Quarter (July thru September 2004). Mr. Staggs states that the cutbacks in discounting is the main reason for the attendance drops.

And so far during 1st Quarter 2005 (October and early November 2004), there have been modest attendance declines at the DLR.<<

To me, high single digits is 7 to 9%, so if we had that much of a decline during most of the summer, where did the attendance come from..

Well, we know that the "Pay for Disneyland, get DCA for FREE" was offered for the first four months of the year (January thru April), so what happened in May and June, well, we had a new ride, which more than likely increased the AP attendance, as AP holders came out to check the new ride.

So why has attendance dropped so much from the first half of the year, as compared to the second half of 2005?

But isn't the July-September quarter traditionally the busiest of the year? With the October-December quarter strong, too? Isn't the January-March quarter the weakest?

How much higher would the second and third quarter have to have been to offset the 7-9% decline in the strongest quarter of the year, plus the decline in 1Q '05?

And is that reasonable, given that there were no new rides during that period (just a Snow White show)? Plus, Space Mountain was down the whole time, with significant downtimes from Thunder. And wasn't Splash down for part of that time, too?

I have had problems with AB's estimates for a couple years now, but this one is really suspect. WDW's numbers are way too uniform. For example, last year MK and AK were flat, Epcot was up 4% and Disney/MGM was down 2%. Historically, the numbers for all four parks have never been as close as this year. That seems a little too coincidental. Especially since it is rare that all parks do well. Ever since AK was built, one park has suffered. This year, with Epcot having the only new E-Ticket, it's increase wasn't that much bigger than the other three parks.

And there is simply no way DL and DCA could have had big gains after such a wretched summer for both parks. Maybe they were wrong on the UO parks last year, but by so much???

Well, Disney's annual report is for the fiscal year 2004, which ended Sept. 30, 2004. And AB's numbers are an estimate of calendar year 2004. But that would mean that, for the numbers to be compatible, Disney would have had to had a much, much bigger Christmas is 2004 than in 2003. Which I seriously doubt, given the lousy weather this December, plus the fact that AB published its numbers in early December, 2004, before the actual Christmas attendance was in.

To my eyes, Disney's report seems much more in line with what I saw at Disneyland in 2004 than the AB estimate. Throw in the funny numbers with Universal over the past two years, and I've got some concerns about the AB numbers, too.

Cedar Fair has issued a press relases detailing the attendance information it has provided the SEC. Cedar Fair's numbers are in line with AB's, with the exception of the report for Knott's, which Cedar Fair said was up "almost" 2 percent to "just over" 3.5 million guests. AB reported Knott's was up 3 percent to 3.58 million.

Could someone please explain to me why PKI is so far ahead of PKD (its sister park) in attendance? They have similar rides (identical in several cases), are run by the same people, and PKD is closer to major population centers (Richmond, DC, and Norfolk), yet PKI crushed it in attendance last year (3.5 mill to ~2.2 mill). Also, PKD has an operating season at least a month longer. What gives?

PKI has it's own share of nearby major population centers. It's located in Cincinatti, Columbus is a couple of hours away, Indianapolis is a few hours away. Also PKI is in an area with very little immediate competition. PKD doesn't have that, as Busch Gardens is a short drive away. All of those things factor in, but there is one other thing. Kings Island simply is a better overall park. Not to take anything away from PKD because it's a good place, but most people who have been to both will tell you that PKI is better.